It’s the biggest sale of the season, and you don’t even have to put on pants! Get 30% off sitewide, and stock up on tees, totes, mugs, and more rad literary gifts.
And don’t forget, you can give the gift of reading with our Best Books of 2017 box, while supplies last.
Today’s Riot Rundown is sponsored by Penguin Random House Audio.
Listening to an audiobook can bring family and friends together this holiday season. Listen to Turtles All the Way Down by John Green on your next family road trip and discuss the important themes of the story. Or, listen to Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak with your friends at book club to prepare for the holiday season. Connect, listen, and discuss with audiobooks from Penguin Random House Audio.
We’re giving away The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman to one lucky winner (and their friend)!
Here’s what The Rules of Magic is all about:
For the Owens family, love is a curse that began in 1620, when Maria Owens was charged with witchery for loving the wrong man.
Hundreds of years later, in New York City at the cusp of the sixties, when the whole world is about to change, Susanna Owens knows that her three children are dangerously unique. Difficult Franny, with skin as pale as milk and blood red hair, shy and beautiful Jet, who can read other people’s thoughts, and charismatic Vincent, who began looking for trouble on the day he could walk.
From the start Susanna sets down rules for her children: No walking in the moonlight, no red shoes, no wearing black, no cats, no crows, no candles, no books about magic. And most importantly, never, ever, fall in love. But when her children visit their Aunt Isabelle, in the small Massachusetts town where the Owens family has been blamed for everything that has ever gone wrong, they uncover family secrets and begin to understand the truth of who they are. Back in New York City each begins a risky journey as they try to escape the family curse.
Go here to enter for a chance to win, or just click the fancy image below:
Negative Assumptions Trigger Poor Reading
According to new research published in Scientific Study of Literature, negative assumptions about science fiction trigger poor reading. Washington and Lee University professors Chris Gavaler and Dan Johnson measured how an automatic assumption that science fiction texts are less worthwhile predisposes readers “to a less effortful and comprehending mode of reading – or what we might term non-literary reading.” “We can now show objectively that the weakness is with the reader, not the story itself,” said professor Gavaler.
Bad Sex In Fiction Award 2017 Nominees
The Literary Review announced its 2017 nominations for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award. The award recognizes “outstandingly bad” scenes of sexual description in good novels. The nominees are: Seventh Function of Language by Laurent Binet, The Destroyers by Christopher Bollen, Mother of Darkness by Venetia Welby, As a God Might Be by Neil Griffiths, The Future Won’t Be Long by Jarett Kobek, War Cry by Wilbur Smith (with David Churchill), and Here Comes Trouble by Simon Wroe. You can read the cringe-worthy excerpts in the linked piece. Previous winners of the award include Erri De Luca and Morrisey.
Anansi Boys Adapted As Radio Drama
BBC Radio 4 is adapting Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys as a six-part radio drama. The story follows Mr. Nancy, an incarnation of the West African trickster god Anansi, from American Gods. British comedian and actor Lenny Henry will play Mr. Nancy in the radio adaptation; Jacob Anderson (Game of Thrones) and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Misfits) will play Nancy’s sons. Anansi Boys will begin airing on Christmas Day.
We’re giving away $500 to spend at the bookstore of your choice! Click here, or on the image below to enter:
Happy Monday! We’re in the last five weeks of the year, when publishing and book news slows down and the shopping increases. But I still have a few great things to share with you today. I hope you also had a wonderful week, and that you’re reading something marvelous! Enjoy your upcoming week, and be excellent to each other. – xoxo, Liberty
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Deals, Reals, and Squeals!
A radio adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys is coming to BBC4.
Harley Quinn is getting an animated television series.
Lizzy Caplan in talks to co-star in Fox’s Gambit.
PW has a big round-up of great children’s book deal news.
Cover Reveals
Here’s the first look at the cover of Hollywood Ending by Kellye Garrett. (Midnight Ink, August 8, 2018)
B&N has a look at the cover of the new book in the Machineries of Empire trilogy by Yoon Ha Lee! (Solaris, June 12, 2018)
Here’s a peek at Lily Anderson’s latest, Undead Girl Gang, called a ‘mashup of The Craft and Veronica Mars.’ (Razorbill, May 8, 2018)
Sneak Peeks!
The first official photos from the adaptation of A Discovery of Witches.
Book Riot Recommends
At Book Riot, I work on the New Books! email, the All the Books! podcast about new releases, and the Book Riot Insiders New Release Index. I am very fortunate to get to read a lot of upcoming titles, and I’m delighted to share a couple with you each week!
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (Algonquin Books, February 6, 2018)
The author of The Silver Sparrow returns with a look at a new marriage torn apart by circumstances beyond their control. Celestial and Roy have barely begun their lives together when Roy is arrested and imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. He is released five years later, but Celestial has found comfort in the arms of Andre, Roy’s best man. Is it too late for them to salvage their marriage? A very insightful, touching story about contemporary relationships.
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara
True crime fans, raise your hand! This is a painstakingly researched book about the Golden State Killer, by the journalist who gave him that nickname. The GSK terrorized California for a decade before disappearing, and three decades later McNamara began a quest to learn his identity. Sadly, she passed away right before its completion, but her husband, Patton Oswalt, helped get her manuscript finished. (Harper, February 27, 2018)
And this is funny.
What’s your YA fantasy series name?
Dear Kid Lit friends,
I grew up loving The Little Prince. I first read the story in high school, and I brought my dog-eared paperback copy with me to college and beyond. So I was thrilled when my editor asked me if I wanted to interview Stacy Schiff, the author of Saint-Exupery: A Biography and the author of the introduction of the new Folio edition of The Little Prince, for the newsletter.
First, can we admire the gorgeous Folio edition?
The Folio Society two-volume edition includes a slipcase and a commentary volume by Christine Nelson with Saint-Exupery’s original sketches and drafts of the story.
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I had a wonderful time asking Stacy Schiff some of my burning questions.
Having reread his earlier works, I was struck by how little I knew about Saint-Exupery. As it turns out, the life consists of equal parts improbability and incongruity, which means there are plenty of surprises. I suppose the greatest was how little time Saint-Exupery — pioneering aviator, and author of various classics of flight — actually spent in the air. He flew the mails for fewer than six years. He was regularly earthbound; the life is sorely deficient in the qualities that make the literature soar. Also, he was a hit-or miss-pilot. Well, not exactly hit-or-miss. As one colleague put it, “When the flight is normal, Saint-Exupery is dangerous. Given complications, he’s brilliant.”
My mother was a French professor; I don’t remember a time when The Little Prince was not in my life. I do know that the book was lost on me as a child. I also remember stumbling later on its extraordinary dedication, a short story in itself. And I most vividly recall my first encounter with the manuscript pages reproduced in this edition, their cigarette burns and coffee stains intact. In a passage he later deleted from the book, Saint-Exupery wrote: “I’ve never told the grown-ups that I’m not from their world. I’ve hidden the fact that I’ve always been five or six years old at heart.” Anyone who knew him would have snorted at that.
It IS stunning, isn’t it?
I spent the early l990s with Saint-Exupery’s friends, girlfriends, editors, colleagues, squadron mates, and family, often to the exclusion of all else. I knew then that he wrote singularly entrancing letters. I failed to grasp, I think, that there might actually not be a more charming biographical subject. It was heavenly to return to him, to his excesses (“If a little bit of tea is good, then a lot of tea is better”) and his eloquence, the courage and the innocence, the practical fumbling and the starry-eyed romanticism. There was a reason why no one who met him ever forgot him. In other words, it was the happiest of reunions, at least on my part.
That’s a question I can’t properly answer. There’s a purity to the book, Saint-Exupery having distilled in it decades of defeats. And there’s a universality to the slyness, to the condemnation — by an innocent — of the benighted, bean-counting adult world. Who hasn’t wished he could change planets? Who hasn’t railed against logic, quarreled with an irrational loved one, subscribed to the moral superiority of childhood? Across cultures, across decades, it remains lonely among men.
At the time of his death, The Little Prince had sold poorly. Reviewers were perplexed: They expected something else from the virile author of Flight to Arras. Was The Little Prince a children’s book for adults, or an adult book for children? It would not be published in France until after the war. Saint-Exupery’s previous books earned prizes and climbed bestseller lists. So the question would be: How did he feel about The Little Prince proving the title by which we remember him? There’s some irony in the little fable having eclipsed the rest of the oeuvre.
*
Many thanks to Stacy Schiff and The Folio Society for taking the time to speak with me!
For those of you looking for a stunning gift for the holidays, you can find this special Folio Society edition of The Little Prince exclusively on the publisher’s website. (I have put it on my own wish list – I hope my husband reads this!) There are other wonderful books there, including a gorgeous copy of The 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith, Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, and Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. A complete list of their children’s collection can be found here. Please note that if you’re looking to order this for the holidays, the deadline to order for standard delivery is midnight EST December 8, and midnight EST on December 14 for express delivery.
It might be the holidays, but boxes of 2018 releases keep coming to my apartment. Woohoo! I just started Knock Out by K.A. Holt (Chronicle, 3/6/18), a companion novel to House Arrest. I’m halfway through Facing Frederick: The Life of Frederick Douglass by Tonya Bolden (Abrams, 1/13/18), and I’m really enjoying learning more about this American icon. I just received Jillian Tamaki’s new book, They Say Blue (Abrams, 3/13/18), which I’m very excited about.
As you gear up for holiday shopping, keep an eye out because my December newsletters will be packed with book recommendations for every age!
I’d love to know what you are reading this week! Find me on Twitter at @KarinaYanGlaser, on Instagram at @KarinaIsReadingAndWriting, or email me at karina@bookriot.com.
See you next Sunday,
Karina
It’s always nice to have a reading companion.
*If this e-mail was forwarded to you, follow this link to subscribe to “The Kids Are All Right” newsletter and other fabulous Book Riot newsletters for your own customized e-mail delivery. Thank you!*
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In the past, I haven’t gotten super excited about the best of lists that crop up at the end of the year — I think they make me anxious about all of the books that I haven’t read and how much great stuff there is out there. But this spring I joined a local book club that reads the New York Times top 10 books of the previous year… and so now I’m super interested in best books lists because they’ll be dictating a chunk of my reading in 2018.
Oxford University Press, publisher of A Farewell to Ice by Pater Wadhams
Peter Wadhams has observing for himself the changes in the Arctic over the course of nearly five decades. His conclusions are stark: the ice caps are melting. There is now the probability that within a few years the North Pole will be ice-free for the first time in 10,000 years, entering what some call the “Arctic death spiral.” A sobering but urgent and engaging book, A Farewell to Ice shows us ice’s role on our planet, its history, and the true dimensions of the current global crisis, offering readers concrete advice about what they can do.
This week the Washington Post announced their best books of the year. Of the top 10, five were works of nonfiction:
In general, I think that’s a pretty interesting list. Three are books that have been on my radar and two — Behave and I Was Told to Come Alone — that are new-to-me, which is an exciting mix of familiarity and surprise.
The Post also put together two other lists that will be of interested to nonfiction readers — 50 notable works of nonfiction from 2017 and the five best memoirs of 2017. So many books, so little time. I’m curious to see what the other major lists will bring!
The time when former White House communications director Anthony was shopping a memoir was almost as short as his tenure in the Trump administration. According to Newsweek, the Mooch has scrapped plans for a political memoir that he was shopping around this summer because publishers didn’t think his draft was very good. I wish I had something smart to say about this but all I can think is… good. (And salute to Book Riot’s own Jeff O’Neal for the punny headline!).
Roxane Gay is editing and writing the forward for a new book is essays, Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture. The publisher’s summary of the book says it will included pieces on “what it means to live in a world where women have to measure the harassment, violence, and aggression they face, and where they are ‘routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied’ for speaking out.” That summary is so good, and the list of contributors that Gay tweeted out is pretty incredible too.
Kindle Deals in History
The end of the year — and all of the long vacations that come with it — always make me want to sit down and dig into some good narrative history. Here are three ebooks deals that might fit the bill:
And with that, we’ve come to the end. If you haven’t done it yet, but sure to hop over to the site where we’re giving away $500 to spend at the bookstore of your choice! Entries are open worldwide and will be accepted until 11:45 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 26. Click here to enter.
Happy reading!
– Kim Ukura, @kimthedork and kim@riotnewmedia.com
Whether you’re stocking up on gifts or doing a little of the old “one for you, one for me” routine, this BOGO’s for you. Buy one tee (adult, kids, whatever), get one free!
And don’t forget to pick up your Best Books of 2017 box while supplies! Rock out with some Riot favorite to wrap up the year.
Today’s The Stack is sponsored by Dark Horse Comics.
An amoral investment banker named Vincent receives an inheritance promising immortality. It also attracts a flame-retardant stripper, a ruthless stalker, and a horde of other aspiring immortals dead set and bloodthirsty in their desire to separate Vincent from his destiny. This biting riches-to-rags novella, which only the author of Fight Club and Beautiful You could deliver, is presented as a deluxe hardcover coloring book, beautifully illustrated by Mike Norton (Battlepug, B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth), and Steve Morris (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) who worked with Palahniuk on his 2016 release Bait: Off-Color Stories for You to Color.
Today’s Riot Rundown is sponsored by Wednesday Books.
Jennifer E. Smith meets The Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy in this deliciously nerdy sequel to The Only Thing Worse than Me Is You, inspired this time by The Importance of Being Earnest.
Elliot Gabaroche is packing up her determination, her favorite Octavia Butler novels, and her Jordans, and going to summer camp. Specifically, a cutthroat academic competition for a full scholarship to Rayevich College, the only college with a Science Fiction Literature program. It’s going to be an epic summer.
Not Now, Not Ever is a “witty, romantic, and exuberantly geeky.” —Jenn Bennett, author of The Anatomical Shape of a Heart